Tag: Capitalism

Of all the stars and objects in the heavens, planet earth is by far the most beautiful. Abundant with life and capable of providing enough for all her inhabitants, man and beast, our human civilisation should by now have broken the bonds of class society and be well on the way to unlocking the limitless potential and creativity of all our children. Instead, imperialism’s destructive power is visible from space; and our garden of Eden is a frightful paradise lost. It’s no coincidence that such bestiality and wickedness has befallen our world since the collapse of the once glorious Soviet Union. No amount of tears or regret will resurrect that socialist bulwark to imperialism and war, but it’s name is showered in glory and calls out to us today, across the lost years since its demise, with a message about the kind of world we’re capable of building. Only by a resolute struggle against opportunism in the labour movement and a consistent, practical application of the teachings of Marxism Leninism, will we be able to get humanity back onto the path of progress and make up for these years groping in the darkness. Workers have the power to do something about the desperate situation in Gaza – our collective power can make a difference; without shells to fire and the guns to fire them, without the media voice and peddling of the corporate lies Israeli Zionism would be strangled in its lair.

The following article depicting the bombardment of Gaza by the Zionists is taken from RT.com:

Astronaut photographs Gaza offensive from space

A German astronaut managed to capture the Gaza war zone from space while aboard the International Space Station. He called it his “saddest photo yet.”

Alexander Gerst, a German flight engineer, geophysicist and volcanologist, spread the news with a short tweet on Wednesday, as the ISS was on a flyby over Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory. The image went viral.

One can clearly see the spots in which the yellowish glow of exploding targets is more prominent than elsewhere.

“From the International Space Station we can actually see explosions and rockets flying over Gaza and Israel,” He wrote on his Facebook fan page late last night, with a German translation underneath.

The ESA astronaut is currently on the 57th day of his mission, together with Russian commander Maksim Surayev and American engineer Reid Wiseman.

Israel is currently in the midst of an all-out assault on Hamas positions in the Gaza Strip – an operation that has recently gone into a new phase, as escalating hostilities and ground warfare bring the death toll to 700.

There are casualties on both sides, but the overwhelming majority is Palestinian, 80 percent of them civilians, according to a recent UN report.

THIS WEEKEND – come and meet cpgb-ml comrades outside the Israeli embassy from 11am and then join us in Southall from 1pm until late

1pm – Support the international celebration of anti-imperialist resistance and solidarity

Saklatvala Hall, Dominion Road, Southall, UB2 5AAA social event to celebrate two important anniversaries in the revolutionary calendar: – the victory of the Fatherland Liberation War in Korea – the storming of the Moncada Barracks in Cuba. This year we will also be marking the 10th anniversary of our party’s founding! An excellent event for bringing friends and family and friends to enjoy a mix of inspiring speeches and informal socialising with like-minded comrades. Alongside representatives from fraternal embassies, come and hear RT journalist Marcel Cartier report back from his recent trips to Ukraine and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. All welcome, including kids.Contact: rango@cpgb-ml.orgMap: click here

Around the country firemen and teachers will be joined by hundreds of thousands of other workers in a coordinated day of strike action. Red Youth urges comrades, friends and supporters to join the demonstrations and rallies (listed below) taking place in cities and towns on Thursday.

Suicide rates among the unemployed are climbing, councils are starting to implement the much-reviled bedroom tax, disabled people are dying as a result of losing benefits, and debt, poverty and homelessness are about to spiral massively.

Every single member of the working class can expect to be affected by this all-out attack, which will blight our lives from the cradle to the grave!

Child benefit, educational grants, family credits, pensions, and social facilities are under attack. Libraries, youth centres and even fire stations are closing down.

Education is being hammered, and private contractors have been given free rein to loot our health service, raking in massive profits at the expense of patient care.

Moreover, as social services disappear, the cost of living is going up and wages are stagnating or going down.

Unemployment and underemployment are endemic. Over 10 percent of workers, and 25 percent of young people, are unemployed, and many more can’t find work that pays enough to live on. Under crisis-ridden capitalism, our future is bleak.

Who is to blame?

At a time of crisis, when working people are angry at being forced into undeserved hardship, it is vitally important that we are able to ignore the divisive propaganda that offers us convenient scapegoats and look at the situation from a class perspective.

What we have today is a crisis of capitalist overproduction. Such crises are built into the system of production for profit – they are as inevitable as exploitation and war while capitalism stalks the earth.

The problem is not one of ‘limited resources’, however. Britain is home to the oldest and most cynical capitalist class, who have truly earned their global-pirate status. Our country is swimming in ill-gotten riches that have been stolen at gunpoint from Asia, Africa and Latin America, in addition to the profits sweated from British workers.

Moreover, as all wealth is the product of our work, every new worker is capable of augmenting our collective wealth and wellbeing. It is unemployment that turns potential workers into a burden; unemployment that has arisen because the capitalists have so impoverished the world’s people that it is now impossible for them to make profits by selling all the stockpiled goods back to the masses who made them.

Since the 2008 crash, ‘reckless bankers’ and their ‘excessive’ bonuses have become the targets of much anger. It is certainly easy to hate those who made so much money out of gambling with our economy, but we must be careful not to mistake a symptom for a cause.

The systemic failure of capitalism did not come about because of the greed of a few ‘rogue traders’, no matter how cynical, amoral, and sociopathic they might be. In the last analysis, they are merely the ‘personification of capital’, doing what the system requires and rewards.

Regulation could not have prevented the crash. ‘Sensible, regulated banking practices’ inevitably lead to fevered speculation as production outstrips consumption and markets contract. There is no such thing as sane, sensible capitalism; no such thing as capitalism without crisis and collapse!

What is to be done?

Our rulers have made it clear what their plan is: they hope to pass the burden of their latest crisis onto the backs of working people through austerity and war, saving their fortunes and their system at our expense. They do not care what catastrophic effects their self-preservation strategies have on the planet or the masses of humanity.

It is time for Britain’s workers to make an alternative plan. The career politicians of the big parties have proven to be servants of the rich. Asking a Tory, LibDem or Labour MP to take care of the workers is about as sensible as asking a crocodile to look after a zebra.

If we want to stop this assault, we must stop expecting the minions of the capitalist state to deliver justice and get organised to claim what is rightfully ours.

We are many and they are few

Step one is defence. Our streets and estates should be no-go zones for bailiffs! We should oppose repossessions and evictions by physically protecting each other’s homes.

And communities need to join with put-upon care workers and teachers to do whatever it takes to kick PFI and privateers out of our schools and hospitals. Decent education and health care are incompatible with private enterprise! We must demand the abolition of fees and the reintroduction of grants for students of all ages.

Similarly, if a library or fire station is closing down, we should join with staff and do whatever it takes to keep facilities open – running them ourselves if necessary.

Workers’ organisations should be repossessing Britain’s one million empty houses and distributing them to the homeless. We need to appropriate surplus food stocks and distribute them to the hungry, and we need to switch on the energy for those who are facing another winter without heating.

Workers have the creative energy to make the attacks of the capitalists totally unworkable. We urgently need an organisation that will inspire and coordinate a truly mass popular resistance against cuts and austerity.

What we don’t need is yet another talking shop run by the same Labour-affiliated careerists who have been diverting and demoralising British workers for decades – not stopping the war, not stopping redundancies, not stopping privatisation and not defending the NHS.

After decades of calling for mindless, tame and fruitless ‘activity’ – dead-end lobbying of MPs, futile court cases, tokenistic demonstrations and endless petition-writing – the placemen who pretend to ‘lead’ our movement need to be given the boot!

Step two is offence. Defending ourselves against austerity won’t change the fact that the country is spiralling into crisis at home and conflict abroad.

If we want to give our children a future free from debt, homelessness, poverty, unemployment, hunger, disease and war, we need to get rid of the parasites who are bleeding us all dry and take the whole British economy into our own hands.

Socialist planning is the only alternative to capitalist anarchy – and the only way to ensure a decent future for all working people. It is time we forged a movement, organisation and leadership bold enough to put the concrete demands of workers back on the agenda.

Join us in this struggle to build a better future – for Britain and for the world!

Our party had a proud contingent on this year’s Mayday Rally in London – and will have another tomorrow in Manchester, for anyone who wishes to join us. The Spectator (a mainstream conservative mouthpiece of British imperialism) have kindly reproduced a beautiful picture of our banner (above) along with the confused headline “I’ve just seen Nazi banners in Trafalgar Square. Well, almost“, followed by a hackneyed, wholly irrelevant, and breathtakingly ignorant rant conflating socialism/communism and fascism. It is a series of arguments that hold little water, and increasingly seen by British workers for the blatant lies they are. Moreover, we have answered these lies time and again – but are not afforded the air-time in this ‘democratic’ society to reach a mass audience.

Stalin remains a figure of controversy in this country – it must be acknowledged. But then so does history in general. For the record of the October Revolution, the Soviet Union, and their profound impact upon the modern world, is a class question – one that threatens the misanthropic interests of our ruling class as no other. And like all class questions, there is no single “national interest”, but the conflicting interests of the great mass of workers on the one hand [and overwhelmingly, the British population remain workers, although they are encouraged to think of themselves as little capitalists], and the currently dominant interests of a tiny handful of city financiers and great industrialists, who control the great mass of British Capital, on the other.

There are some feint-hearts, even among ‘socialist and communist’ groups, who think it ‘tactically unwise’ to openly carry such ‘provocative’ banners on the streets of London. But they miss the point. To advocate socialism, is to ask that power be transferred from the hands of the capitalists to the hands of the workers.

To even hint at such a policy will bring charges of ‘stalinism‘ from the bourgeois class, and their ideological agents in the working class movement. And quite right. Stalin, after all, was a serf who participated in the October Revolution that overturned a feudal and religious empire. He went on to lead the construction of a worker’s state, which liberated 1/6 of the world’s surface from exploitation of man by man, and nation by nation. The Soviet Union and the Red Army went on to defeat the mightiest (Fascist) warmongering armies of capitalist imperialism ever assembled on the face of this earth, ushering in a period of peace and prosperity for a third of humanity, who built a socialist economic system. To give up the example of the Soviet Union from the outset is to give up on socialism altogether.

Whose interests did Stalin serve? That is the question. The answer is ours. British workers, as much as Soviet workers. [Consider, for example, the real reasons behind the provision of the NHS after Soviet Victory in WW2, and its increasing privatisation now the Soviet Union is no more] That is why he remains a colossus, that cannot be removed from the pages of history and the consciousness of the workers, despite all the malign lies, and gnawing criticism of the intellectual and political servants of the imperialist monopoly-capitalist class.

On the role of Britain’s imperialist ruling class supporting fascism, there is no shortage of material, whether we turn to the recent example of the Ukraine, or the older examples from the run up to world war 2, and the Spanish Civil War.

On the legendary role of the Soviet Union in combating fascism, and the part played personally by Stalin in this battle, there is also no shortage of material. Indeed, without understanding the military, economic and political events that lead to the defeat of the German 6th Army, that flower of the NAZI war machine, by the Soviet Red Army at Stalingrad, modern history is simply incomprehensible.

We would particularly ask our readers – friends and critics – to familiarise themselves with this material in order to negotiate the blathering of such confusionists as the Spectator’s Mr Bloodworth, or the Telegraph’s Mr Walters, and all the other heirs of the Hearst Press, stretching back to Gobbles himself, of whom this unfortunate pair are but minor examples.

Millions Killed by Communism?

The origins of the fantastic figures for “alleged deaths attributable” to Stalin and Mao, are shrouded in obscurity, for the methods used to conjure them up are so unscientific as to be laughable, were they not propagated on an industrial scale by the press of the capitalist gangs that seek to continue their domination, without subjecting their assertions to the slightest level of scientific rigour, scrutiny, peer-review, or basic journalistic standards. The wilder the accusation, the more gleefully they are propagated.

Mario Sousa’s excellent pamphlet, Lies concerning the History of the Soviet Union, has been translated into English by Ella Rule, our vice president and international secretary, and should be compulsory reading for anyone who wishes to understand the Soviet Union, the working class movement, socialism, or modern history.

As to the Spectator’s scurrilous assertions regarding China, and Mao’s alleged death toll during the Great leap forward, we would also ask all interested in the truth to read this article reproduced in Lalakar, and simply note the massive increase in life-expectancy (from 35 to 69), health and population in China during the time of Chairman Mao’s leadership of New China when the Chinese people can truly be said, to have stood up!

Given that the Soviet Union is no more, and the UK state spends much of its time justifying its armed incursions abroad, and at home, on the basis of fighting the bogeymen of “islamist extremism” and “religious fundamentalism”, one might ask why we are subjected to this constant stream of invective against the great communist leaders at all – since they have already been dismissed as a historical irrelevance time and again.

We should note in passing the breath-taking hypocrisy of our British imperial masters, who claim to be motivated by deep concern for ‘democratic and peaceful’ aims, but feel ‘morally obliged’ to promote their humanitarian sentiments by funding such agents as the medieval Al-Qaeda nutters in Syria (who, fresh from lynching black Africans in Libya, lop off heads and devour human livers, in order to overturn a secular, progressive, democratically elected and socialist leaning anti-imperialist government – who incidentally won’t allow the US any military bases on their soil, but are one of the chief supporters of all popular democratic forces across the Middle East), and openly fascist pro Nazi Racists in the Ukraine.

British workers must learn to hold our heads up high, reclaim our history and challenge the lies that aim to keep us on our knees!

Long live Mayday! Long Live the glorious memory and example of the USSR! Slava Stalin!

Ella Rule gives a short, amusing and informative talk, about the recent history of the ‘women’s movement’ in Britain.

Addressing a meeting to mark International Women’s Day, held by the CPGB-ML and Red Youth in Birmingham, on 8 March 2014, she outlines why working class women have not been involved in the women’s movement – because it has not addressed their needs.

Speaking from her experience, and with reference in particular to the 1972 women’s conference held in Skegness, which she and her comrades attended, she illustrates how a potentially progressive and liberating movement was effectively hijacked and side-tracked by a number of petty-bourgeois groups who pushed their false, anti-men, anti-worker, anti-social(ist) and anti-marxist views on the movement that developed in the 1960s and 1970s, effectively destroying it.

She prefaces her remarks by noting that women have everything to gain by pursuing the path of socialism, and the overthrow of the capitalist system, that exploits the majority, divides them and gives them a life of servitude, in the interests of fabulous super-profits of an insignificant handful (of men predominantly, but a few of the few are, in fact, women) – the finance capitalists.

How can real equality and liberation be won by working women? By liberating humanity from the system of wage slavery.

Keith Bennett gives an interesting presentation on the impact of the world capitalist economic crisis of overproduction upon the economic and social life of socialist countries, at a CPGB-ML seminar held as economic meltdown hit in 2009.

The classic case of a socialist country immune to crisis is provided, he says, by the Soviet Union in the 1930s, whose economic output increased 5-fold while the capitalist world’s declined, mired as it was in the great depression that followed the Wall Street Crash, and dragged on until it fuelled events leading to a second World War.

The Soviet Union, after temporary concessions to capitalism following the destruction of world war one, the civil war, and the war of intervention, put aside Lenin’s ‘New Economic Policy’ and embarked upon full scale collectivisation in the countryside, enabling increased agricultural production and rural prosperity. This in turn allowed the towns to grow, to be fed, and increase their industrial output. It was the economic, cultural and technical development consequent upon its socialist economy that enabled the Soviet Union to defeat German Nazi Imperialism in the Great Patriotic War (WW2) between 1941-45.

Keith goes on to discuss modern China, the inroads of capitalist economics into her social life, the extent to which she always had a dual economy, and the fact that China’s economy, while continuing to expand, has been adversely affected by the declining capacity of the capitalist world to absorb her exports.

Referring to the history of the world economy, Keith points out that Capitalism cannot offer a sustainable source of economic growth, peaceful or stable development, and remains inherently prone to crisis, dislocation, instability and war.

Capitalism, if allowed to flourish in the economic sphere, will inevitably seek political power, and to change the nature of the state to suit its interests, he concludes.

Mao, it turns out, brought into being 800 million, well fed, well clothed and well educated human beings: A fact that not only China, but all of us should celebrate. China’s rise has been a great source of enlightenment that exercises a positive influence on human civilisation.

Carlos Martinez, secretary of the “Hands off China” campaign, gives a speech on the legacy of Mao Zedong’s Life, and the impact that his outstanding leadership of the Chinese revolution had upon China and the wider world, at a meeting held jointly with the CPGB-ML to mark the 120th anniversary of his birth. It is a legacy that all progressive humanity should celebrate and applaud.

And yet the neoliberal imperialist narrative, ground out by official capitalist academia and popular media, tries to pass off Mao as some kind of social criminal and mass murderer – when in fact he helped to lift fully one quarter of humanity out of feudal and colonial oppression, and the stultifying and backward mode of existence, rife with starvation, disease, famine and war, crushing oppression of the masses, and of women in particular, that characterised pre-revolutionary china.

For detailed refutation of the standard bourgeois lies regarding the Great Leap forward, this article from LALKAR is instructive: http://www.lalkar.org/issues/contents/nov2012/china.html

The question we should ask, is not how many people died during the years of industrialisation in china, but rather, how many Chinese and other human beings owe their lives to the communist revolution that gave birth to the People’s Republic of China, and the development of modern china; a revolutionary process that Mao played such a major part in initiating, leading and trying to secure against capitalist restoration.

Carlos points out that the population of China was long stagnant at 500million, with a miserable life expectancy of just 35 years in 1949, on the founding of the PRC, when Mao famously declared “the Chinese people have stood up!”

At the time of Mao’s death, 27 years later, in 1976, the population had reached 900 million, and life expectancy 67. If today China is a modern, enlightened, broadly socialist country – not withstanding the encroachments of capitalist economy upon its economic and political life – then 1.3 billion Chinese have much to thank Mao for.

All those countries who rely on China to give them some economic and political breathing space from the crushing weight of Anglo-American imperialist oppression, likewise have much to celebrate on the 120th anniversary of Mao’s birth.

Long live Socialist China! Long live the memory, teaching and example of Mao Zedong!

Dan and Angela of Red Youth speak at the celebration of the Great October Socialist Revolution, shortly before heading up the Red Youth / CPGB-ML delegation to the world festival of Youth and Students in Quito, Ecuador, in December 2013.

Speaking to a packed meeting at Saklatvala hall, in Southall, West London, they describe the attacks of the capitalist class on British workers during the past 5 years of crisis, and the lessons that young British Students and Workers can draw from the inspirational struggle of the Russian workers led by the Bolsheviks leading up to the October revolution in 1917, and their success in overthrowing that decadent parasitic and moribund Capitalism in crisis, that continues to blight our lives today.

In constructing the Soviet Economy, to serve the needs of the masses of working people of those lands, the Soviet people demonstrated that it IS possible to build an alternative world; of peaceful development, cooperation and solidarity, abolishing racial and sexual discrimination, and ending crisis, famine, war, and the crippling and inhuman exploitation of man by man and nation by nation.

The meeting, putting to bed 2013 and looking forward to the great leap we will make together in 2014, is planned to celebrate the outstanding revolutionary life and contribution of Comrade Mao Zedong, and has been planned to coincide with the 120th anniversary of his birth.

Please put the date in your diary, and mobilise friends and comrades for what we can expect to be an inspiring and informative meeting, and an enjoyable end-of-year social!

The establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, following a protracted revolutionary struggle led by the Communist Party of China, was the second greatest event of the world proletarian revolution following the 1917 Great October Socialist Revolution, significantly shifting the global balance of forces in favour of the then existing camp of socialism and people’s democracy led by the Soviet Union of JV Stalin.

The lessons of the Chinese revolution, led by Comrade Mao Zedong, an outstanding Marxist Leninist, also carry huge significance for the revolutionary struggles in all colonial, dependent, semi-colonial, semi-feudal and oppressed nations in a number of areas, including especially, but not limited to, the peasant and agrarian questions, the armed struggle and the people’s army, and the united front against imperialism. Their continued validity and applicability has been clearly demonstrated most recently with the triumphant advances of the Nepalese revolution.

In nearly 60 years since the founding of the People’s Republic, the Chinese people, under the leadership of the Communist Party, and guided by the science of Marxism Leninism, and its concrete application to their specific conditions, Mao Zedong Thought, have weathered and overcome all manner of challenges and difficulties and have scored enormous achievements in rebuilding their country along socialist lines, so that what was, in 1949, one of the poorest, most backward and most wretched societies on earth, is now advancing as a great world power, increasingly in the front ranks of global economy, culture, science and technology.

In the course of this process, the lives of the Chinese people have been improved immeasurably, with hundreds of millions of people lifted out of poverty. Only the progress registered by the Soviet Union in the era of Comrade Stalin can compare with this actual, material contribution to the liberation and betterment of humanity.

The growing strength and power of China is increasingly acting as a check on the unbridled aggression and hegemonism of US imperialism. China renders significant assistance to other socialist and progressive countries and, by establishing relations of equality and mutual benefit with China’s booming economy, countries throughout Asia, Africa, Latin America and elsewhere are increasingly able to resist imperialist blackmail, safeguard their independence, develop their economies and improve their peoples’ standard of living.

Faced with this situation, US imperialism, which has only ever attempted to disguise its hostility to the People’s Republic of China for opportunist and cynical reasons, is increasingly expressing renewed open hostility to China, openly labelling the country as the biggest potential threat to US global interests in the 21st century. The US bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade during the Yugoslav War, the spy plane incident in the South China Sea, the campaigns against China’s friendly relations with countries such as Burma and Sudan, the counterrevolutionary turmoil in Tibet and the related attempts to sabotage the Beijing Olympics to be held this August are all manifestations of the unrelenting hostility of US imperialism, along with other imperialist powers, including Britain, to the People’s Republic.

Congress completely condemns all manifestations of imperialist hostility towards the People’s Republic of China. We rejoice at all the achievements of the Chinese people in building a modern, strong and powerful country under the leadership of their Communist Party.

As Lenin pointed out, the struggle against imperialism would be a sham without the struggle against opportunism. In Britain, nearly all the opportunist forces in the working-class and progressive movements line up with their ‘own’ bourgeoisie, as well as with US imperialism, to a greater or lesser extent, in their hostility towards People’s China. Congress resolves that the CPGB-ML will continue and intensify our struggle against this opportunism as an integral and essential part of our revolutionary work.

Following the treachery of the Khrushchevite revisionists, the Communist Party of China took a leading role in the great international struggle against modern revisionism. Our party also traces its origins to this struggle. The treachery of modern revisionism, and, finally, the counterrevolutions in the Soviet Union and eastern Europe in 1989-1991 created complex and difficult conditions for the building of socialism in China.

In introducing elements of a market economy, the Chinese comrades have pointed out that their country is today only in the primary stage of socialism. Alongside China’s undeniable achievements, serious problems have arisen, including, but by no means limited to, wealth, income and regional disparity, corruption, grave shortcomings in public education and health care, and environmental degradation. The leadership of the Communist Party of China itself openly acknowledges these problems and their gravity.

Join us to celebrate and mark the life, work and struggle of Comrade Mao Zedong on the 120th Anniversary of his Birth

Harpal Brar, Chairman of the CPGB-ML, gives a presentation summarising Marx’s teachings on the state. Key quotations and ideas are drawn from Marx and Engel’s seminal work, “The Communist Manifesto”, Engels’ “Origin of the Family, private property and the state”, Marx’s “Critique of the Gotha Program”, Engels’ “Anti Duhring”, Marx’s “18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte” and “The Civil War in France”, and Lenin’s “The State and Revolution.”

It’s an excellent introduction to Marxism, and totally exposes the commonly peddled fallacy that workers can simply vote for socialism – or a social democratic party, such as Labour in Britain – in order to solve their problems.

Workers cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery (the capitalists’ parliament, army, police force, judiciary, etc.) and use it to achieve their own ends. Bourgeois rule, connections and interests run through these institutions, like the lettering in a stick of Brighton Rock.

The capitalists’ ‘democratic’ state must be smashed, and the working class must have a state of its own, to ensure society and the economy are actually organised in our own interests.

This workers’ state – the dictatorship of the proletariat – will then wither away over a historical epoch, as its functions cease to be necessary, in the transition to the higher stage of communism, when the economic formula “from each according to their ability; to each according to their need” will be applied to production and distribution of goods, well-being and culture.

The only possible alternative to private profiteering at the expense of the planet is communism – you have to be Red to be Green! But if we are to steer ourselves away from the cataclysmic climate change that looms, it is vital that we identify our most immediate enemy: the first genuine obstacle in the path of building socialism … and that obstacle is imperialism.

The past two months have seen an endless stream of print and audiovisual propaganda force fed to the British public concerning the arrest and detention of a collection of European Greenpeace activists, who have been dubbed the ‘Arctic 30’ by the imperialist press.

The stereotypical allegations of human-rights and environmental abuse against the Russian Federation, however, bring with them only imperialism’s trademark stench of hypocrisy and greed.

Hypocritical acclaim for ‘environmental campaigners’

Arctic oil exploration

The state of the Arctic is of grave concern, and acts as a barometer of global environmental damage. It is an issue dear to the hearts of the world’s people, which explains why imperialism has made it a key propaganda plank in its portrayal of a ‘backward’ Russia (along with its alleged persecution of female punk bands, etc).

Global warming has led to a significant reduction in the Arctic sea-ice volume, which in 2012 stood at just one-fifth of what it was in 1979. Oil spills (such as that from the Exxon Valdise in 1989), particularly from the heavily-polluted Alaskan region of the US, have contributed to the degradation of our planet’s environment.

Now, the decreased ice covering of the Arctic region, alongside technological advances, has led to some oil stores that were previously seen as being inaccessible are now open to drilling.

As part of the drive to take advantage of this new bonanza, Britain has declared its ambition to become a ‘hub’ for Arctic oil exploration. The Foreign Office stated recently that “The UK government will promote the UK as a centre of commercial expertise with direct relevance to many industries that are growing in the Arctic.”

Meanwhile, the US is aggressively pursuing Arctic oil exploration, and is busy bartering to acquire Canadian territory in its most immediate vicinity.

Quite clearly, neither US nor British imperialism have any moral capital or high ground from which to sermonise when it comes to the question of environmental degradation in general or the matter of Arctic energy exploration in particular.

Imperialism is the harbinger of environmental destruction, and has rarely shown any concern for the effect of its fanatical profiteering. Whether it be pollution from manufacturing and extraction processes, the safety of workers, or the survival of flora, fauna and human inhabitants that live near mines, plants and factories – particularly in the oppressed world or among poor, working-class communities – the piratical exploitation of the capitalist system is legendary.

As for humanity on a broader scale, or the threat that climate change could pose to the very existence of the human race – the finance capitalists stand utterly helpless before, and unwilling to alter, the cynical cash calculations of an exploitative system that should have been discarded long ago.

Right to protest

Much of the ‘outrage’ presented in the corporate media has been around the alleged denial by the Russian Federation of its citizens’ ‘right to protest’.

One does not have to think too hard to imagine how the US or Britain would react to a group of Russian and Chinese activists disrupting the polluting activities of Shell or BP in the Gulf of Mexico or the Arctic – or, indeed, the Nigerian people in the Niger delta. It would meet them with military engagement, and terminate them with extreme prejudice.

This bare-faced hypocrisy is made all the more obvious, coming at a time when British councils, for example, are being given the powers to make any peaceful protest or demonstration illegal under the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill.

Of course, that’s not the limit for the imperialists when it comes to oppressing the masses and protecting what they consider to be rightfully theirs, using the good-old British bobbies domestically, and the army abroad. The countless genocidal wars of plunder waged from Korea to Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan are an ongoing and revealing testament to the depraved and inhuman ‘logic’ of imperialist greed.

Imperialism’s true position

Ultimately, the story pushed by western media is no more than one propaganda piece in a many-pronged attack, which is being aimed at the Russian Federation for its key part in frustrating US domination – and particularly its recent defence of the legitimate government of Bashar Al-Assad in Syria.

Imperialism holds no green credentials, but it is becoming increasingly adept at spinning its anti-popular crusades by manipulating the growing global concern for our environment. BP, Shell, Exxon, Texaco – all these companies are now ‘green’ we are told. But China and Russia? Increased consumption by the masses of the oppressed world? Well, these are clearly a ‘dire threat to the environment’, opine the tame media pundits of imperialism in a globally-orchestrated cacophony that many on the left seem powerless to resist.

Imperialism continues to seek domination, not democracy, in order to sustain its decrepit, decaying interests and rule. A little more critical and independent thought on the part of those who pose as ‘leaders’ of the anti-war and working-class movements in Britain would not go amiss.

In this regard, returning to the basics of Marxist and Leninist teachings should be the departure point for all who would not loose their bearings in the rapids of these revolutionary times.

Genuine global change

In order to bring about the changes so badly needed by our society and the environment, we must build socialist states, built on satisfying the needs of the broad masses of humanity in a planned, organised and sustainable way. We must make humanity the master of production – rather than the anarchy of capitalist production being the blind ruler that frustrates all reasonable control over human endeavour, as is currently the case.

Working people have an overriding need and deeply-held desire to preserve our miraculous, lone blue planet as the source of all nourishment and shelter. There is no question of a communist movement or society leaving ecological questions unaddressed.

The most critical task before the environmental movement and all who cherish our planet, however, is to identify the most immediate enemy that stands in the way of safeguarding it!

In the last analysis, the imperialists are the ones who put the needs of short-term profit, of preservation of the current class-based economic inequalities, and the unjust and barbaric madness that stems form them, above all other concerns.

They think that vast personally amassed riches will enable them to buy their individual way out of all the problems they have created for the masses of humanity. They are the callous kings of capital – the financial oligarchs, the imperialists and their servants. They are the ones who declare a system – socialism – that embodies the needs and interests, the political rule, of the vast masses, to be the most evil end that could befall humanity. They are our implacable enemies, and the greatest danger to human civilisation.

“Their wealth is built upon our poverty – their joy upon our misery!”

As it was essential for the Bolsheviks to overthrow the tsars before advancing on the path to the overthrow of capitalism, it is essential that we identify our most immediate target.

That target is imperialism, and only with the overthrow of this rotten, decadent, parasitic and corrupt system, can we set out on the path to save humanity from poverty, unemployment, mass starvation, famine, misery, war and environmental disaster – whether desertification, pollution, over-fishing or climate change.

We must refuse to be led by the nose into following the capitalists’ lead – either by coercion or by accepting spurious claims of ‘environmental concern’. Let us remember that our ruling class’s new-found concern for ‘humanitarianism’ and ‘the environment’ does not stop it from bombing entire countries into the stone age, dumping chemical and nuclear waste into the Red Sea off the coast of Somalia, or liberally spreading depleted uranium across swathes of the globe.

We must refute all of imperialism’s predatory propaganda so that we can germinate a mass movement that aims at achieving a genuinely peaceful, sustainable and progressive society.

We must repudiate our rulers’ warmongering lies and oppose their predatory, criminal wars. All workers must unite, regardless of race, sex, religion or nationality, and bring to an end the devastation of civilisation and the destruction of our planet!